


Consortio.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Angst, Brotherhood, Future Character Death, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mark of Cain, Mental Health Issues, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1623317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is always work to do but right now he doesn’t feel like doing it. He doesn’t feel like doing anything. Castiel’s head throbs, a little, or else he pretends that it does. He can remember the sensation of headache: the press of veins and the constriction of his face in a grimace, the dull ache in a place that can’t be reached. Usually brought on by dehydration. By crying, twice. Not eating enough. Stress. None of these are problems anymore, not physiologically. But they hang like phantoms. He can almost feel the pang under his ribs, the dry rust of his throat. He can almost feel something.</p>
<p>
  <i>You look like shit, Castiel.</i>
</p>
<p>"Thank you," Castiel says, to the empty air around him, without opening his eyes. "That’s very helpful."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consortio.

_You look tired._

Castiel closes his eyes. He is alone in the office, for now: outside the glass doors there are bodies moving back and forth, lights blinking in and out of focus on the enormous map, phones ringing. There is always work to do but right now he doesn’t feel like doing it. He doesn’t feel like doing anything. Castiel’s head throbs, a little, or else he pretends that it does. He can remember the sensation of headache: the press of veins and the constriction of his face in a grimace, the dull ache in a place that can’t be reached. Usually brought on by dehydration. By crying, twice. Not eating enough. Stress. None of these are problems anymore, not physiologically. But they hang like phantoms. He can almost feel the pang under his ribs, the dry rust of his throat. He can almost feel something.

_You look like shit, Castiel._

"Thank you," Castiel says, to the empty air around him, without opening his eyes. "That’s very helpful."

When he was human there was nothing: not the continual hum of creation nor the harmonies of his kin, no itch of demons when he got too close. There was silence in his head, except for the mantras and questions it filled itself with, slowly, inexhaustibly, like a swimming pool fed by a garden hose. He was used to being a sea: a map of deeper currents and shallower ones, moving with priority and purpose towards some pole. Being human was an exercise in impulse and sensation. He would see a glossy advertisement for a sandwich and want instantly the crumbling swell of bread between his teeth, in his hands, churning in his gut. There were no filters, except the skin that seemed to filter nothing, to have animal wants all its own: for touch and softness, for heat, for cold, for something to rub between the pads of his fingers, for movement that could soothe his trembling mind. For Dean, sometimes: the press of his hand on one shoulder, the touch of his voice like a physical weight. For simple, unattainable things like that Castiel ached and longed and suffered every humiliation, knew loneliness and doubt. Castiel remembers it. There was nothing, and everything, endlessly. He was alone in the continual stream of his own being.

And now again, this.

_Your boyfriend’s got an interesting tattoo. Awfully familiar._ Castiel can hear him thinking, almost. Can imagine the tilt of his head, the mocking tap of fingertips against his chin, his borrowed human mimicry. _Gee, I wonder how-_

"You know how," Castiel says. "You know how to remove it, too. The real you."

_Probably._

"But you’re not going to tell me."

_Castiel,_ his brother’s voice says, _Castiel, Castiel._ And now Castiel can hear the smile; he can begin to see it when he opens his eyes, a wry curving up at the corners, taking shape. There is a shadow behind the desk, a spot of wall where the light bends and curls around itself, where it is unwilling to touch down, to spread further. There is something sitting there. There is nothing sitting there at all.

"I know," Castiel says. He turns and looks away. "What fun would that be?"

 

 

 

He told them this was over, long ago. It was one of many lies, things he thought would help. He sees now they helped nothing, saved nothing, made no sense from chaos, offered no comfort, meant nothing.

_They wouldn’t have understood. Family first._

"You are not my family," Castiel says. He does not say, I have another family now, one I chose. He does not know if Lucifer would laugh at him, if he would be laughing at himself for wanting to believe it. He is in the front seat of his stolen car, waiting for Hannah to arrive with the new recruits. There is no one in the passenger seat, but Castiel does not put anything there, no papers or weapons. He leaves it empty, most of the time. He pretends it’s neatness, fastidiousness, a love of order. He is not actually sure he loves order, after all. Another lie. "You turned your back on us. On everything." 

_Takes one to know one, buddy._

"I refused to take part in the apocalypse," Castiel says. "It’s not the same."

_Semantics._

"Fundamental difference," says Castiel. 

_I suppose you’re right._ Castiel glances across the seat and there is still nothing to look at, nothing but the glint of sunlight off the windshield, sliding down the leather of the bench seat like a broad streak of honey. _We’re different, you and I. You’re still wishing you could climb back under heaven’s skirts. Wishing you could make it all better, make everybody play nice, hold hands, ring around the rosy. You still want to go home._

"No," says Castiel. "I know I can’t."

There is silence for that, and Castiel doesn’t know what he would prefer: the silence forever, or this one single remaining thread, the unraveled end that hooks him like the string of a kite. He wonders. And then there’s a long sigh from somewhere, from somewhere inside of him, from the place that brings these remnants up and drags them across his corrupted senses, from inside the thing that Dean would call his heart. From the core of him, the broken parts that should have righteously cast these shadows out and burned their traces, that should have let this go. But they didn’t, he didn’t. He hasn’t. There is nobody saying these words, but that doesn’t mean Castiel cannot hear them. He is mad still, probably, because he expects that one day everything could change.

_You and me both, brother._

"You and me both," says Castiel.

 

 

 

"Why did you make them?" Castiel asks. He is sitting on the edge of his motel bed, which mainly acts like a very large table for his charts and maps and newspaper clippings. He has taken his jacket off and rolled his sleeves up, as if he were overheated. He isn’t. But he’s tired of reading news reports and scouring the internet for demonic and angelic activity. He needs better answers. "Your knights?"

_Well, I’d already mastered checkers. Hell of a game._

"Did you want to destroy something, or did you want to be God?" Castiel asks. "Did you want to make something?"

_I made demons._

"I know," says Castiel. "But the knights were different." Something occurs to him, then. Something strange. The knights are purer, more embodied of wrath and power. Harder to kill but also harder to distract from their purpose: not bought with pretty deals and contracts, not interested in niceties, not willing to play. It is eerily familiar. "Did you," Castiel says, and stops, and starts again, stronger. "Did you try to make angels?" There is laughter, strange and sharp, crisp like the snapping of a drum. Castiel waits.

_You can’t seriously think-_

"You tried to make angels," Castiel says, "You did. And you failed. You failed because you are not the Father."

_What do you know, what do you know of our Father?_ It’s a hiss of rage, cutting for bone: Castiel can almost feel the fan of spreading wings, the stench of smoke. But it’s memory, a trick of shattered lenses, crossed wires. There is no power in the room but Castiel’s, no rage but his. Almost. Turned inward, like a stunted branch. A puppet show of dialogue that is really a monologue, Castiel knows. But he can’t stop going around and around in this rut. _Our Father who made and abandoned us, who made us kneel in front of broken dolls and call them beautiful. We were beautiful, Castiel. Us._

"We were." He thinks of light, of falling. Of waking in the woods with an aching back, scraping his hands on the bark of trees when he pulled himself upright. "But so are they. You were wrong about them, you always have been."

_I keep forgetting you joined their club._ Weary, now. Bitter as Castiel sometimes feels; winding down from the fight. _Drank their muddy kool-aid. I suppose I can’t disagree with you anymore, what would be the point?_

"You could help me," Castiel says. "Tell me how to save him."

_Because I’m such a huge fan of Dean Winchester._

"Because you don’t exist," says Castiel. "Only I exist, and I want you to tell me."

_Compelling stuff. Think it’s good enough?_

"I don’t know," says Castiel. "I never knew, with you."

_With you, you mean._

Castiel can’t disagree.

 

 

 

"Who told you how to do this?" Sam asks. He’s bloody and wild-eyed, holding Dean’s shoulders down in case the mark wakes him again, sends poison rage through his veins, shakes his exhausted body out of the sleep he’s under. Castiel has him for the moment, but he doesn’t know how long that will hold. "Where’d you get this ritual?"

"My brother," Castiel says. "Kind of." He cuts into his hand with his blade, traces the lettering through his own skin into the meat, feels almost nothing as hot blood wells out and drips in streaks down under his sleeve. Almost nothing: he can feel the edges as they sever and the pulsing of the the veins, the mimicry this body performs of human circulation, the places where nerves extend through the flesh and provide him information, data. It doesn’t hurt. Not exactly: hurt is not the word. He presses his hand to the mark and feels his blood sear away on the sigil, feels his word burn against the other, true name to true name. He understands at last that the mark is not a curse, not really. Not a sickness: just a promise made by an angel to a man. Castiel has made one of those. Castiel meant it.

“Gabriel?” Sam says, gaping in surprise. “He’s still-“

"No," Castiel says. He wraps a strip of his coat around his hand and Dean’s arm, binds them close. Tight. "The other one." Sam’s eyes narrow down, suspiciously.

"Which other-" he manages, and then the place where Castiel’s hand is tied down bursts into white flames, and Sam falls backwards and clunks his head against the steps. There is a rush of power at the point where Castiel touches Dean, a cold fire like a breach in the skin of the world, where the deepest hell and furthest space meet, power that sucks the air from the room and the balance from the foundations, power that shakes the walls hard enough to bring them down. But the walls don’t fall, and Castiel hangs on. His own mark was first, his claim is older. He remade this flesh and it still remembers him, a little. It might be enough to loosen this, to peel it off Dean’s soul like a band-aid from reddened skin. Castiel remembers sitting in the gas station bathroom, covering his blisters with plastic strips, peeling them off again when they were sweaty and crusted over, the way small hairs clung to them, the way everything felt sharp and blank and filled to the brim at all times, the way life spills around the edges of everything. He’s starting to lose focus. Consciousness. The mark is burning through his name, burning into him, looking for the core. It will find the grace at the middle of him- sick and weakened, but still grace- and it will eat and eat until it’s full, and then it will choke to death on it, and this will be over. Dean in line, smiling at him; Dean throwing him the blade and Castiel sticking it between an angel’s ribs, saying, _I want to live_. Dean red-eyed in the throes of the blade, Dean’s dirty face in purgatory, telling him that they would make it, that Castiel only needed to try, not to give up, not to let go like always, just not to let go for once. Castiel is losing track of where he is, exactly. His hand is still pressed onto Dean but it feels like it’s been burned away, charred to nothing. His name is not as great as Lucifer’s was, but Lucifer is not here and Castiel is, and Castiel is will and light still, Castiel is fighting. A dead promise against a living one. It feels as if things are giving way. Like gaining ground. As if at the other end of the rope, someone else was letting go.

_Guess this is goodbye_ , he hears, as if to the left of him, over his shoulder. He can almost feel the touch of something, a hand or a tendril of light, a gesture like a pat, a small caress. Unfamiliar, but not unappreciated.

"Yes," says Castiel. He puts his other hand around the cloth to hold himself tighter, to clench his fingers around Dean’s arm in a death-grip, to ensure that every bit of grace will be funneled to that point. Dean is shaking restlessly from side to side, Dean’s body is fighting both the poison and the cure at once. It won’t be easy. But if Castiel can burn this name away-

_I’ll miss our little chats._

Castiel will miss the quiet times between them: waiting for a voice he barely remembers. He will miss sitting in the dark and waiting for stars. He will miss being a current of soaring thought on the highest pinnacles of heaven, a gust of divine energy circling the spires and coursing through the veins of this body, this body he now thinks of as his own, blasphemously. This is the secret. He will miss everything. He will miss washing his hands in sinks when the air is hot and the water cold and good. He will miss Sam reading aloud from a book. He will miss diners: cups being refilled and plates being emptied, bright signs dotting the highway. Dean sitting on the plastic seats, rolling the paper from a straw between his fingers, pushing his fries across the table, asking what Castiel likes. How strange to know it, now. To mourn it as it passes, a flower barely bloomed, a bud in cold spring. Dean is going to be so angry. But Dean will be alive. He can’t stop. This is the only way. Castiel might not be mad anymore, after all. He is trying something different, and he is fairly sure it will yield a new result. 

_Yeah. Not existing will be pretty different._

"Oh, shut up," says Castiel.

He feels, but does not see, a smile.

 

 

.


End file.
